1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal device in which electronic money IC cards memorizing electronic monetary information are inserted, and with which the electronic monetary information is read out and/or written into the cards.
2. Description of Relevant Art
As an example of prior art relating to the present invention, such a terminal device for an IC card was already described, for example in Japanese Utility Model Laying-Open No. Hei 1-144957 (1989) entitled "A Reader and Writer For A IC Card Having A Door Structure". However, in accordance with the terminal device for a IC card of the prior art, only one IC card can be inserted into one card slot opening thereof. Therefore, with such the device, for inserting a plurality of IC cards into it so as to transfer data between them, there is necessity of further providing another card slot opening and another means or structure for establishing electrical connection between the device and the IC card inserted into the another slot opening, separately, thereby causing a drawback of enlarging the size of the device itself.
Further, as an another prior art relating to the present invention, in a terminal device described for example in Japanese Patent Laying Open No. Hei 6-20106 (1994) entitled "A Data Transfer System and A Data Transfer Terminal", there are provided two card slot openings in which two IC cards can be inserted separately. However, in the conventional terminal device, as mentioned in the above, the device itself becomes large in size, due to the increase in the number of the card slots and the interior structures thereof. The terminal device described in the prior art, however, is such a device which is inherently located in front of a store for the purpose of conducting payments on account electronically, therefore there is no consideration about portableness of the device.
Moreover, as a further prior art relating to the present invention, a portable terminal device also has been known, for example in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. Hei 9-50497 (1997) entitled "A Transfer Device of Electronic Monetary Information", in which two IC cards are inserted into two card slot openings respectively. In the conventional portable terminal device, the two slot openings for insertion of the IC cards are provided on a front edge portion and a rear edge portion of the device, respectively, and one of the two IC cards is inserted into the front edge slot opening, and the other thereof into the rear edge slot opening. And within the device, those inserted IC cards are inserted and positioned on a same plane with abutting the front edges to each other, thereby reducing the thickness of the device and obtaining superiority in the portableness.
However, in general, with the portable terminal device mentioned above in which two IC cards are inserted, it is constructed with an assumption that monetary information of one of the IC cards are read out and the monetary information which is read out is transferred to the other IC card. In that case, it has a drawback that the IC card which is inserted into the rear edge slot opening can be easily dropped out from the slot because of small degree of insertion (i.e., it is not deeply inserted into the slot), according to the construction thereof. Further, regarding an operability of the portable device, in particular in insertion of the IC cards, there is no problem for the slot opening which is positioned on the front edge portion of the device. However, since the other slot opening is located on the rear edge portion (reverse side) of the device, the operation of inserting the IC card into the other slot opening is troublesome, and there is a problem in the operability of the device.